For today’s blogpost, our class was asked to create our own version of the HR Diagram, one of the most prominent tools used in astronomy today. If you do not know what the HR (or Hertzsprung-Russel) Diagram is, it is essentially a luminosity vs. temperature graph for all of the stars in our galaxy that we have observed to date. Some very interesting relationships can be noted between the stars on the graph (i.e., the fact that mass is clearly a deciding factor for the temperature, luminosity, life span, and other characteristics of stars), all of which are very clear since the HR Diagram has concentrations of stars in various areas, which contradicted the initial hypothesis that stars would be randomly scattered throughout the graph. The HR Diagram is actually very interesting, take a look here:

The HR Diagram, which compares stars of different types and shows some striking conclusions

In an attempt to recreate the HR Diagram with different variables that happen to have similar relationships to each other, I researched the example of poverty vs. obesity, since the two are clearly related. Here is what I came up with:

A graph comparing the relationships between socioeconomic status and obesity levels

To understand my WH Diagram, think of it in 3 different sections – poor, skinny dudes, the main sequence (which was not given a euphemism because it scales the entire graph and therefore all socioeconomic levels), and the rich, which I separated into two sections, well-off big-guys and wealthy fat-guys. Although I did not use specific values to create my graph and instead used general descriptions like “lower class” or “obese”, there are still certain relationships between socioeconomic status and obesity that the graph highlights.

Let’s start with the bottom left area, where the poor, skinny dudes reside. Here we see a relationship between the underweight and the lower class. Why might this relationship exist? The answer to this one is easy; people who cannot afford enough food probably will not have too much weight on their bones, simply by virtue of the fact that food does cost a considerable amount of money. It is hard for someone to prioritize their health if they cannot even afford a place to live. It is important to note here that the reason these people are so skinny (and probably unhealthy) is because they do not actually have enough money to purchase food to eat. While this may seem obvious since I have repeated it so many times, this is key because if you take a small step up in the socioeconomic ladder – where a family can afford food, but only particularly unhealthy food like McDonalds or Burger King – this family will actually be more overweight than your average family. So, although poverty generally implies some level of obesity, if a person/family is too poor to afford any food at all, then they will likely be very underweight.

The next section, the main sequence, is also simple to understand. The more wealthy you are, the more healthy food you can afford. This is interesting because although wealthier people will likely eat more food since they can afford it, they are not generally overweight because the food that they are eating is healthier. Take a look at this picture for an example:

In almost every section, Whole Foods is more expensive

It is evident that Whole Foods is almost always more expensive than its competitor, but why? The answer to this question lies in the fact that when people go to Whole Foods, they are willing to spend more because they want to buy organic foods, which are healthier alternatives to non-organics. So, if you can afford to buy food at Whole Foods, you will probably be a healthier person, but you need to spend more to achieve that health.

The last section is the rich, separated into two groups: wealthy fat-guys, well-off big-guys. The distinction between these two sub-groups is not particularly necessary, I simply included it to show that there are different levels of over-eating. This “rich” section is a bit of an outlier because it stems from people who have so much money that they over-eat to a point where they are obese. Whether these types of people are eating organic foods or not since they can afford them (which is probably unlikely since their preferred dinner consists of a big, fat, juicy steak), if you eat enough food, you will be overweight, it is as simple as that. Most people do not even have enough money to afford to eat this much food, but for those that do, they should be wary of ending up on the top right of my WH Diagram.

Anyways, the overall trend of the WH Diagram should be clear – the less money you have, the lower quality of food you are able to afford, and the more overweight you probably are. I have noted that there are certain groups that lie off of the main sequence for one reason or another, but all of these outliers can be explained in some way.